On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs

Evolving Landscape of Ethics in Oncology: A Journey Through the Past, Present, and Future

Providing a brief overview of past, present, and future ethics issues in oncology, this article begins with historical contexts, including the paternalistic approach to cancer care. It delves into present-day challenges such as navigating cancer treatment during pregnancy and addressing health care disparities faced by LGBTQ+ individuals. It also explores the ethical implications of emerging technologies, notably artificial intelligence and Big Data, in clinical decision making and medical education.

Unfounded beliefs, distress and powerlessness: A three-wave longitudinal study

The aim of the study was to examine the relationships between unfounded COVID-19 beliefs and distress and powerlessness, specifically, whether distress and powerlessness are causes or consequences of unfounded COVID-19 beliefs represented by conspiracy beliefs and pseudoscientific beliefs regarding treatment and measures. Unfounded beliefs were assessed using the COVID-19 Unfounded Beliefs Scale; distress was measured with the Symptom Checklist-10, and powerlessness was measured with four items measuring the feeling of losing control. Data collection took place during three phases of the pandemic in Slovakia (October 2021, N = 1838; July 2022, N = 1,420; April 2023, N = 925). Results suggest that individuals with stronger unfounded beliefs about COVID-19 reported greater powerlessness longitudinally, and individuals with stronger COVID-19 unfounded beliefs treatment and measures reported greater distress longitudinally (notably, beliefs about COVID-19 measures in the first wave were associated with distress in the second wave, and beliefs about COVID-19 treatment in the second wave were associated with distress in the third wave). The present findings corroborate an existential threat model of conspiracy theories that says the relationship between unfounded beliefs and indicators of well-being is bidirectional, so interventions should be focused both on eliminating the unfounded beliefs and strengthening well-being.

What is so special about conspiracy theories? Conceptually distinguishing beliefs in conspiracy theories from conspiracy beliefs in psychological research

In psychological research, conspiracy theories are often defined as explanations of events involving the hidden action of a malevolent group. Such a definition raises a false negative problem, as it does not capture conspiracy theories that are not about events. It also raises a false positive problem because it categorises any conspiracy-based explanation as a conspiracy theory, even though distinguishing conspiracy theories from other conspiracy claims is at the core of many attempts to define this notion. Based on more elaborated definitions and a conceptual reengineering approach, we propose that conspiracy theories can be defined as claims that the public is being pervasively lied to regarding some aspect(s) of reality, to allow some group(s) to enact a harmful, self-serving agenda. Compared to other definitions, ours has the advantage of not taking a position regarding the truth value of conspiracy theories, making it highly operative for psychological research.

Irish Media Coverage of COVID-19 Evidence-Based Research Reports From One National Agency

BACKGROUND

How research findings are presented through domestic news can influence behaviour and risk perceptions, particularly during emergencies such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Monitoring media communications to track misinformation and find information gaps is an important component of emergency risk communication. Therefore, this study investigated the traditional media coverage of nine selected COVID-19 evidence-based research reports and associated press releases (PRs) published during the initial phases of the pandemic (April to July 2020) by one national agency.

METHODS

NVivo was used for summative content analysis. 'Key messages' from each research report were proposed and 488 broadcast, print, and online media sources were coded at the phrase level. Manifest content was coded and counted to locate patterns in the data (what and how many) while latent content was analysed to further investigate these patterns (why and how). This included the coding of the presence of political and public health actors in coverage.

RESULTS

Coverage largely did not misrepresent the results of the reports, however, selective reporting and the variability in the use of quotes from governmental and public health stakeholders changed and contextualised results in different manners than perhaps originally intended in the PR. Reports received varying levels of media attention. Coverage focused on more 'human-interest' stories (eg, spread of COVID-19 by children and excess mortality) as opposed to more technical reports (eg, focusing on viral load, antibodies, testing, etc).

CONCLUSION

Our findings provide a case-study of European media coverage of evidence reports produced by a national agency. Results highlighted several strengths and weaknesses of current communication efforts.

Théories du complot et COVID-19 : comment naissent les croyances complotistes ?

La pandémie COVID-19 causée par le nouveau coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 a provoqué une crise mondiale sans précédent, associée à une prolifération de théories du complot. La prévalence de ces croyances complotistes a participé à affaiblir la crédibilité des mesures gouvernementales de santé publique, limiter l'accès des citoyens aux sources d’information fiables, et perturber la réponse des systèmes de santé face à la crise sanitaire. Plusieurs hypothèses ont été proposées en psychologie et en sciences sociales pour comprendre la genèse de ces croyances dans des contextes épidémiques, associant l’implication conjointe de facteurs psychologiques (comme la volonté de préserver sa sécurité, de maintenir une image de soi positive, ou encore de renforcer son rôle social) et sociodémographiques (comme les caractéristiques générationnelles, socioculturelles et politiques des individus). Toutefois, les découvertes récentes en sciences cognitives à propos des mécanismes élémentaires de traitement de l'information offrent un nouvel éclairage sur la génération des croyances conspirationnistes à travers les époques et les cultures. Dans cet article, nous proposons une définition de la théorie du complot et une classification des croyances complotistes pendant la pandémie de COVID-19. Nous montrons comment les mécanismes de génération et de mise à jour des croyances permettent d'expliquer la genèse des théories du complot, et nous proposons plusieurs hypothèses étayées par les recherches contemporaines en sciences cognitives et en sciences sociales à propos des théories du complot.

Belief correlations with parental vaccine hesitancy: Results from a national survey

We conducted a nationally representative survey of parents’ beliefs and self‐reported behaviors regarding childhood vaccinations. Using Bayesian selection among multivariate models, we found that beliefs, even those without any vaccine or health content, predicted vaccine‐hesitant behaviors better than demographics, social network effects, or scientific reasoning. The multivariate structure of beliefs combined many types of ideation that included concerns about both conspiracies and side effects. Although they are not strongly related to vaccine‐hesitant behavior, demographics were key predictors of beliefs. Our results support some of the previously proposed pro‐vaccination messaging strategies and suggest some new strategies not previously considered.

Conspiracy beliefs and distrust of science predicts reluctance of vaccine uptake of politically right-wing citizens

It is not uncommon for conspiracy theories to have a political agenda, some conspiracies are more endorsed by the political left-wing than the political right-wing and vice-versa. Conspiracy theories quickly flourished as the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and this may have been an underlying factor in a reluctance by some in following public health policies such as the wearing of face masks. In the present study, we surveyed a community sample of 1358 adults just prior to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our first aim was to determine whether one’s political orientation, whether they are politically left- or right-wing, would be predictive of an individual’s belief in conspiracy theories and determine whether this relationship can be exacerbated by a distrust in science. The second aim was to determine how such a relationship could explain an individual’s vaccine hesitancy. Our results supported that indeed those that identify as right-wing tended to have higher hesitancy associated with taking the COVID-19 vaccine. However, we demonstrated that this association, in part, can be explained by a corresponding belief in COVID-19 related conspiracies. Interestingly, such a relationship only emerged in the presence of a general distrust in science. In other words, if a right-wing individual has at least a moderate trust in science, they demonstrated similarly low endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracies as their left-wing counterparts. Mitigating the right-wing endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracies then aligned with a reduction in vaccine hesitancy. Our findings indicated that public interventions seeking to increase trust in science may mitigate right-wing endorsement of conspiracy theories and thus lead to a more unified and positive response to public health behaviours such as vaccination.

The Struggle against Cancer Misinformation

Cancer misinformation has become an increasingly prevalent problem, imperiling public health and understanding. Cancer researchers and clinicians must play a significant role in combating its detrimental consequences.

Medical disinformation and the unviable nature of COVID-19 conspiracy theories

The coronavirus pandemic has seen a marked rise in medical disinformation across social media. A variety of claims have garnered considerable traction, including the assertion that COVID is a hoax or deliberately manufactured, that 5G frequency radiation causes coronavirus, and that the pandemic is a ruse by big pharmaceutical companies to profiteer off a vaccine. An estimated 30% of some populations subscribe some form of COVID medico-scientific conspiracy narratives, with detrimental impacts for themselves and others. Consequently, exposing the lack of veracity of these claims is of considerable importance. Previous work has demonstrated that historical medical and scientific conspiracies are highly unlikely to be sustainable. In this article, an expanded model for a hypothetical en masse COVID conspiracy is derived. Analysis suggests that even under ideal circumstances for conspirators, commonly encountered conspiratorial claims are highly unlikely to endure, and would quickly be exposed. This work also explores the spectrum of medico-scientific acceptance, motivations behind propagation of falsehoods, and the urgent need for the medical and scientific community to anticipate and counter the emergence of falsehoods.

Medical conspiracy theories: cognitive science and implications for ethics

Although recent trends in politics and media make it appear that conspiracy theories are on the rise, in fact they have always been present, probably because they are sustained by natural dispositions of the human brain. This is also the case with medical conspiracy theories. This article reviews some of the most notorious health-related conspiracy theories. It then approaches the reasons why people believe these theories, using concepts from cognitive science. On the basis of that knowledge, the article makes normative proposals for public health officials and health workers as a whole, to deal with conspiracy theories, in order to preserve some of the fundamental principles of medical ethics.

Establishing a taxonomy of potential hazards associated with communicating medical science in the age of disinformation

OBJECTIVES

Disinformation on medical matters has become an increasing public health concern. Public engagement by scientists, clinicians and patient advocates can contribute towards public understanding of medicine. However, depth of feeling on many issues (notably vaccination and cancer) can lead to adverse reactions for those communicating medical science, including vexatious interactions and targeted campaigns. Our objective in this work is to establish a taxonomy of common negative experiences encountered by those communicating medical science, and suggest guidelines so that they may be circumvented.

DESIGN

We establish a taxonomy of the common negative experiences reported by those communicating medical science, informed by surveying medical science communicators with public platforms.

PARTICIPANTS

142 prominent medical science communicators (defined as having >1000 Twitter followers and experience communicating medical science on social and traditional media platforms) were invited to take part in a survey, with 101 responses.

RESULTS

101 responses were analysed. Most participants experienced abusive behaviour (91.9%), including persistent harassment (69.3%) and physical violence and intimidation (5.9%). A substantial number (38.6%) received vexatious complaints to their employers, professional bodies or legal intimidation. The majority (62.4%) reported negative mental health sequelae due to public outreach, including depression, anxiety and stress. A significant minority (19.8%) were obligated to seek police advice or legal counsel due to actions associated with their outreach work. While the majority targeted with vexatious complaints felt supported by their employer/professional body, 32.4% reported neutral, poor or non-existent support.

CONCLUSIONS

Those engaging in public outreach of medical science are vulnerable to negative repercussions, and we suggest guidelines for professional bodies and organisations to remedy some of these impacts on front-line members.

An automated pipeline for the discovery of conspiracy and conspiracy theory narrative frameworks: Bridgegate, Pizzagate and storytelling on the web

Although a great deal of attention has been paid to how conspiracy theories circulate on social media, and the deleterious effect that they, and their factual counterpart conspiracies, have on political institutions, there has been little computational work done on describing their narrative structures. Predicating our work on narrative theory, we present an automated pipeline for the discovery and description of the generative narrative frameworks of conspiracy theories that circulate on social media, and actual conspiracies reported in the news media. We base this work on two separate comprehensive repositories of blog posts and news articles describing the well-known conspiracy theory Pizzagate from 2016, and the New Jersey political conspiracy Bridgegate from 2013. Inspired by the qualitative narrative theory of Greimas, we formulate a graphical generative machine learning model where nodes represent actors/actants, and multi-edges and self-loops among nodes capture context-specific relationships. Posts and news items are viewed as samples of subgraphs of the hidden narrative framework network. The problem of reconstructing the underlying narrative structure is then posed as a latent model estimation problem. To derive the narrative frameworks in our target corpora, we automatically extract and aggregate the actants (people, places, objects) and their relationships from the posts and articles. We capture context specific actants and interactant relationships by developing a system of supernodes and subnodes. We use these to construct an actant-relationship network, which constitutes the underlying generative narrative framework for each of the corpora. We show how the Pizzagate framework relies on the conspiracy theorists’ interpretation of “hidden knowledge” to link otherwise unlinked domains of human interaction, and hypothesize that this multi-domain focus is an important feature of conspiracy theories. We contrast this to the single domain focus of an actual conspiracy. While Pizzagate relies on the alignment of multiple domains, Bridgegate remains firmly rooted in the single domain of New Jersey politics. We hypothesize that the narrative framework of a conspiracy theory might stabilize quickly in contrast to the narrative framework of an actual conspiracy, which might develop more slowly as revelations come to light. By highlighting the structural differences between the two narrative frameworks, our approach could be used by private and public analysts to help distinguish between conspiracy theories and conspiracies.

Psychometric assessment of the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale

The Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (GCBS) is the most widely used measure of general belief in conspiracy theories. The scale comprises five related but distinct factors (Government Malfeasance, Extraterrestrial Cover-up, Malevolent Global Conspiracies, Personal Wellbeing, and Control of Information). Despite this, investigators have typically treated the GCBS as unidimensional by referencing only overall total. Although, the GCBS possesses established psychometric properties, critics question its factorial structure, suggest alternative models, and recommend routine examination of GCBS dimensions as part of analysis. Through two studies, the present paper assessed GCBS factorial structure, internal reliability, convergent validity, and invariance. This involved comparing the original five-factor solution with alternative one, two, and three-factor models. To ensure that the best fitting model was robust, the authors conducted analysis in two independent samples (Study one, N = 794, UK university-based sample; and Study two, N = 418, UK respondents collected via a market research company). Results in both studies indicated superior fit for the correlated five-factor solution. This solution demonstrated invariance across gender, and samples (Study one and two). Furthermore, the total scale and five subfactors evinced good alpha and omega total reliability. Convergent validity testing exhibited associations of an expected strength between conspiracist beliefs, reality testing, and cognitive insight. Large intercorrelations existed among GCBS subfactors, suggesting that the measure reflects a narrow set of interrelated conspiracist assumptions. These findings support the use of overall scale scores as an index of belief in conspiracy theories.

Large networks of rational agents form persistent echo chambers

Echo chambers (ECs) are enclosed epistemic circles where like-minded people communicate and reinforce pre-existing beliefs. It remains unclear if cognitive errors are necessarily required for ECs to emerge, and then how ECs are able to persist in networks with available contrary information. We show that ECs can theoretically emerge amongst error-free Bayesian agents, and that larger networks encourage rather than ameliorate EC growth. This suggests that the network structure itself contributes to echo chamber formation. While cognitive and social biases might exacerbate EC emergence, they are not necessary conditions. In line with this, we test stylized interventions to reduce EC formation, finding that system-wide truthful ‘educational’ broadcasts ameliorate the effect, but do not remove it entirely. Such interventions are shown to be more effective on agents newer to the network. Critically, this work serves as a formal argument for the responsibility of system architects in mitigating EC formation and retention.

Understanding the perceived logic of care by vaccine-hesitant and vaccine-refusing parents: A qualitative study in Australia

In terms of public health, childhood vaccination programs have benefits that far outweigh risks. However, some parents decide not to vaccinate their children. This paper explores the ways in which such parents talked about the perceived risks and benefits incurred by vaccinating (or not vaccinating) their children. Between 2013–2016 we undertook 29 in-depth interviews with non-vaccinating and/or ‘vaccine hesitant’ parents in Australia. Interviews were conducted in an open and non-judgmental manner, akin to empathic neutrality. Interviews focused on parents talking about the factors that shaped their decisions not to (or partially) vaccinate their children. All interviews were transcribed and analysed using both inductive and deductive processes. The main themes focus on parental perceptions of: 1. their capacity to reason; 2. their rejection of Western medical epistemology; and 3. their participation in labour intensive parenting practices (which we term salutogenic parenting). Parents engaged in an ongoing search for information about how best to parent their children (capacity to reason), which for many led to questioning/distrust of traditional scientific knowledge (rejection of Western medical epistemology). Salutogenic parenting spontaneously arose in interviews, whereby parents practised health promoting activities which they saw as boosting the natural immunity of their children and protecting them from illness (reducing or negating the perceived need for vaccinations). Salutogenic parenting practices included breastfeeding, eating organic and/or home-grown food, cooking from scratch to reduce preservative consumption and reducing exposure to toxins. We interpret our data as a ‘logic of care’, which is seen by parents as internally consistent, logically inter-related and inter-dependent. Whilst not necessarily sharing the parents’ reasoning, we argue that an understanding of their attitudes towards health and well-being is imperative for any efforts to engage with their vaccine refusal at a policy level.

Using democracy to award research funding: an observational study

BACKGROUND

Winning funding for health and medical research usually involves a lengthy application process. With success rates under 20%, much of the time spent by 80% of applicants could have been better used on actual research. An alternative funding system that could save time is using democracy to award the most deserving researchers based on votes from the research community. We aimed to pilot how such a system could work and examine some potential biases.

METHODS

We used an online survey with a convenience sample of Australian researchers. Researchers were asked to name the 10 scientists currently working in Australia that they thought most deserved funding for future research. For comparison, we used recent winners from large national fellowship schemes that used traditional peer review.

RESULTS

Voting took a median of 5 min (inter-quartile range 3 to 10 min). Extrapolating to a national voting scheme, we estimate 599 working days of voting time (95% CI 490 to 728), compared with 827 working days for the current peer review system for fellowships. The gender ratio in the votes was a more equal 45:55 (female to male) compared with 34:66 in recent fellowship winners, although this could be explained by Simpson's paradox. Voters were biased towards their own institution, with an additional 1.6 votes per ballot (inter-quartile range 0.8 to 2.2) above the expected number. Respondents raised many concerns about the idea of using democracy to fund research, including vote rigging, lobbying and it becoming a popularity contest.

CONCLUSIONS

This is a preliminary study of using voting that does not investigate many of the concerns about how a voting system would work. We were able to show that voting would take less time than traditional peer review and would spread the workload over many more reviewers. Further studies of alternative funding systems are needed as well as a wide discussion with the research community about potential changes.

Toward a Better Understanding of the Relationship between Belief in the Paranormal and Statistical Bias: The Potential Role of Schizotypy

The present paper examined relationships between schizotypy (measured by the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experience; O-LIFE scale brief), belief in the paranormal (assessed via the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale; RPBS) and proneness to statistical bias (i.e., perception of randomness and susceptibility to conjunction fallacy). Participants were 254 volunteers recruited via convenience sampling. Probabilistic reasoning problems appeared framed within both standard and paranormal contexts. Analysis revealed positive correlations between the Unusual Experience (UnExp) subscale of O-LIFE and paranormal belief measures [RPBS full scale, traditional paranormal beliefs (TPB) and new age philosophy]. Performance on standard problems correlated negatively with UnExp and belief in the paranormal (particularly the TPB dimension of the RPBS). Consideration of specific problem types revealed that perception of randomness associated more strongly with belief in the paranormal than conjunction; both problem types related similarly to UnExp. Structural equation modeling specified that belief in the paranormal mediated the indirect relationship between UnExp and statistical bias. For problems presented in a paranormal context a framing effect occurred. Whilst UnExp correlated positively with conjunction proneness (controlling for perception of randomness), there was no association between UnExp and perception of randomness (controlling for conjunction).